"Yeka mina, bheka zakho."

We spent our first (and only) full day in Durban (eThekwini) seeing the sights...with a tour guide named Shiny Bright. The highlight of the day, for me, was the Phansi Museum. It's called the Phansi Museum because it's in the basement of a building -- "phansi" is just an adverb meaning "beneath, below, down," so if you want someone to sit down you can just say, "Hheyi, wena, hlala phansi," -- but the collection consists mainly of izingubo zamaZulu nabantu abanye [clothing of the Zulu and other peoples]. But of course izingubo are intricately connected with amasiko [customs], so that clothing places a person in a particular clan or region, indicates marital status, et al. Which leads me to the title of this post: we saw several bridal skirts made by omakoti [brides, but especially newly married women]. Now, a makoti is expected to serve her new in-laws faithfully, diligently, patiently, and without complaint, despite any abuse her new mother-in-law might send her way. What kind of abuse? The curator's examples went something like: "This girl is taking too long with my tea, this girl is an imicondo [thin legs, person with scraggly legs], what kind of child will she bear us," njalo njalo [continually, in that manner, i.e. etc etc]. BUT...the bridal skirt offered the makoti an outlet for her frustrations, an apparently culturally sanctioned one: thus the bridal skirt that we saw, with the words "Yeka mina, bheka zakho" [literally "Leave me, watch your own," i.e. mind your own business!] written out in intricate beadwork. I'm not sure if there's a lesson in all of this for those of you who are long-suffering daughters-in-law, but if you're good at ubuhlalu [beadwork] and need an outlet for your frustrations, go ahead and give it a shot. We saw izinto eziningi ezinye [many other things] at the Phansi Museum, including some iziqhaza [Zulu earplugs, or earrings] which were fascinating for me since I have been doing some work, in a roundabout way, on the shifting meanings of iziqhaza in Zulu culture, but I'll leave it at that for now and just recommend the museum if you ever have an afternoon to kill in Durban and decide not to spend it lying on the pristine beaches...

From the Phansi Museum we went to the muthi [umuthi is Zulu for medicine] market, about which I am reluctant to say much: I felt a bit uncomfortable just being there (especially in such a large group, with Shiny leading the way), and I'm almost as uncomfortable interpreting it for you. But a quick explanation: the muthi market is where you would go to get your "traditional" cures or remedies. So there are lots of women selling various herbs and things, and also some zangoma [singular "isangoma," plural "izangoma"] around; "isangoma" is difficult to translate, but something like "seer" or "diviner" is probably best. The sangoma is not to be confused with the umthakathi, who practices witchcraft. Rather, the sangoma throws the bones and then helps to figure out what might have caused your problem(s) and how you might go about solving it/them. The sangoma might send you off to the inyanga, or herbalist, who would then help to resolve your problem[s] with the help of one or more of the many herbs available at the market. Anyway, it was a bit uncomfortable to be at the market at all, and perhaps would have been easier if we had been in a smaller group and I had been able to khuluma isiZulu [speak Zulu] with some of the folks there, but it sounded to me like a deep, deep Zulu was being spoken there, one even further out of my league than usual. If I get a chance to go back, perhaps I'll go by myself and ask what I would need to do uma umkami ungiphatha kabi [if my wife treats me badly].

That about sums up my big day in Durban, though we did make it back to the hotel in time to splash around in the Indian Ocean and watch intshonalanga [sunset, from "shona," to set or sink, and "langa," the sun] on the beach. Speaking of sunsets, that is my one big complaint thus far: the weather is nice, considering that it's winter here, but it's dark out by 6pm every night -- it's like NYC in winter, except 50 or 60 degrees warmer. But other than that, konke kwakuhle eThekwini [everything was nice/beautiful in Durban]!